Recalling the strong feelings he held towards his father as he saw him lash out at his mother, Dr Tutu, 82, wrote: “There were so many nights when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother.

“I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways.”

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He added: “If I dwell on those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother, and in ways of which I was incapable as a small boy.”

In the book, The Book of Forgiveness, Dr Tutu admits that he found it difficult to forgive his late father despite knowing that “he caused pain because he himself was in pain”, suggesting that the memories of the abuse his mother suffered still caused him “fresh” grief.

However, he added that he could not know for certain if, having experienced the “stresses and pressures” faced by his father, he might have behaved any differently if the two had “traded lives”.

If his father was still alive today he would forgive him because that is the only way “to heal the pain in my boyhood heart”, Dr Tutu writes in the book, which he co-wrote with his daughter Mpho.

There is a “great freedom” in seeking forgiveness and “great strength” in individuals admitting their own wrongdoing, he concludes.

“It is how we free ourselves from our past errors. It is how we are able to move forward into our future, unfettered by the mistakes we have made.”